


a bird in the hand

by unreadlibrary



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: F/M, Frank Ocean lyrics, Future Fic, another version of a Fuu/Mugen epilogue, drabble-ish, gettin literary with it, not edited for possible tense switching sorry/not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:45:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreadlibrary/pseuds/unreadlibrary
Summary: She settles near the sea because she knows that's where he belongs, and even if he doesn't find her or seek her out, it's where she belongs too....She's nearly married when he finally stumbles into her house and bleeds on her one good yukata.





	a bird in the hand

_\--_

_wishing you Godspeed, glory_

_there will be mountains you won't move_

_still I’ll always be there for you how I do_

_\--_

She became a virgin midwife; that fact always made her laugh.

She is fussy in everything else but when she was working—there was a keenness there that was usually encouraged only in boys and men. Somewhere along the way she stopped wearing clothing the color of cherry blossoms simply because her life was a different color now. She wore crepe-beige not because it was plain but because it was everything. She stitched the hems and sleeves with symbols of birds and bridges, waves and bells. She tossed these garments aside when she needed to start the narrative afresh. She always made room for the sunflower, the rooster, the long blue fish. She did not need reminding, but she was an honorable girl who honored.

She settles near the sea because she knows that where he belongs, and even if he doesn’t find her or seek her out, it’s where she belongs too. She can’t abide to be landlocked. She’s nearly married when he finally stumbles into her house and bleeds on her one good yukata. She nurses him back to health and it’s finally at this moment that she realizes she should be a doctor. She’s never met a woman doctor but it doesn’t occur to her that this couldn’t be the case.

\--

_just a sweet word_

_the table is prepared for you_

\--

Mugen stays a week, surprisingly silent, which makes her wonder at the story he will eventually tell her. It’s that week that she’s tested on her ability yet again—so when she averts the spread of tuberculosis with a smooth quarantine, she doesn’t have to earn the title of doctor—she becomes so, and the reputation builds over the years. That comes later.

At that moment, a week into Mugen’s return, life begins to slow again for Fuu. It was not a collection of experiences, seasons inevitable, but these few days with him where she waits to see what will become of this one opening: either he stays or he goes. She had trained herself to be fine with his coming or his going. She’d live a full life either way.

Her almost fiancée visits once, and with a few polite words, a mutual understanding, he doesn’t visit her again. Mugen pretends to sleep through the conversation. He can’t approach Fuu about it until he gets this first thing out of the way—the reason he came to her.

She’s borrowing a neighbor’s yukata and it’s too big for her. The fabric wraps and wraps around her, and she’s pulled tight and he just wants to loosen it: that’s one version of his affection. The other is keeping as much distance between them as possible for their next conversation. He always could distinguish her like that, as a person. He doesn’t really have experience with lovers; she’ll be his first and only (she’ll kiss his fingertips, he doesn’t know why he likes that, it’s a throwaway gesture, doesn’t get to the business of it at all, but then there’s the thought of her yukata pooling at her feet, but all he thinks of are her ankles—fingertips—ankles—if he’s honest, it’s really her smile—that’s how you can tell a woman from a body, that and the eyes—hers are a type of teak he could sail on, a color he knows by her name only).

In the half-light neither of them speak. Then Fuu smiles.

“When did you start covering your tattoos?” She’d been meaning to ask him.

She thought he was going to approach her first, but she surprised herself in coming off her haunches and coming to kneel by him. She takes his hand, begins to unwrap the bandages around his wrist. There on the bone she traces his name, very small, perhaps to help him remember how it was formed. He lets her. A ribbon of colorless lighting trails through him, taking away all weariness.

He knows how to trace his mouth down her neck, but he stops. That’s where that lightening had taken him, but he needed self-control. She catches her breath. She pulls back in time. He’s never felt pinned like this, her hand folded over his. He could flicker through a dozen experiences that never quickened him like that did, the sight of her hand, the memory of her breath. He remembers his blood over her clothing and the reality of why he was here settles in again, better than a cold trail of water.

He'd needed a friend.

\--

_I let go of my claims on you,_

_it’s a free world_

\--

By the time he finishes his tale, Fuu had started a fire to keep light in the house. She wants nothing more than to share this warmth with him and fall asleep close to his ribcage. She closes her eyes, imagining it.

“So you chose not to kill them,” she said. He didn’t have to reply.

“You’ve grown up,” she spoke again, stoking the fire. She could feel him looking at her.

“Ain’t a skinny little thing anymore, are you?” He said this as gently as he was able. He didn’t have much practice. She understood this about him. She’d made a silent promise, to the both of them, that she would not need any proof from him of how he felt. She folds her hands beneath her head and waits for him to lie down beside her. They were parallel lines. He reaches out to touch her hair, takes his hand back, rolls over and falls asleep easily. He took his thoughts down with him in his dreams. That’s how it is when you love people. It does not give you the privilege to see everything at once.

_\--_

_always love you how I do_

_let go of a prayer for you_

_\--_

They married on an August night, a bright half-moon turning the world silver.

Later they moved like red and silver themselves—or, some have described it as fire over the pages of an open book. Either way, it was a years-old tradition. She protested weakly against him, knowing teeth and skin, husband and wife. She hushed him, hung at his collarbone, he liked that her stomach was always an island of warmth. And other things, private things. It had never been something private to him. That it how it was different from before. It was all she knew.

So she bore him two children; she could only bear him two children. A son, and years later, a daughter. Each loved and spat and struggled with becoming like and unlike their parents. Theirs was a tall, strange legacy. Their mother was a woman and a doctor (a seamstress, a midwife, a woman, a girl); their father was a criminal and a hero (a fisherman, a boatwright, the one who fixes their sandals, the one who fights invisible opponents).

And the family name they took was absorbed and rewritten with modernized characters generations later, but in any translation and iteration it had something to do with birds.

_\--_

_this love will keep us still_

_blinded of the eyes_

_I’ll always love you_

_until the time we die_

_\--_

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are from Frank Ocean's "Godspeed."
> 
> I normally try to let my works rest a few days, then I edit and submit, but as I'm STILL working on my longer Samurai Champloo fic, I was hungry to post something. Sorry/not sorry for making no definitive choice on the tense of this ficlet. I tried to catch most of the switches, but I get the feeling there's ones I've missed. 
> 
> This is one version of where the characters might end up. In another story I gave Fuu a different profession; I like thinking she could have gone on to do anything.


End file.
